It was only a few weeks ago that much of the mainstream media was criticizing the Trump administration for the “Christianization” of US foreign policy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s evangelical faith was widely blamed for the increased focus of American diplomacy on combating the persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslim governments or Islamist terrorists, as well as for its support for Israel.

The administration’s interest in the subject — especially in contrast to the policies of the Obama administration — was denounced as a political payoff to Trump’s Christian conservative voters and an insult to the Muslim world. Such attention fueled, we were told, Islamophobia in the United States and elsewhere.

Sources - Trump - Focus - Persecution - Christians

Some of the same sources were also quick to claim Trump’s focus on persecution of Christians and his so-called “Muslim ban” (which, in fact, only sought to restrict entry from five countries that were acknowledged terrorist hotbeds and did not ban all Muslims) was even somehow linked to last month’s horrifying terror attack at a New Zealand mosque by a lone extremist.

But the coordinated Easter Sunday attacks on hotels and churches across Sri Lanka that have been blamed on radical Islamist suicide bombers from the National Thow­­­heeth Jama’ath group and that took the lives of 290 people and wounded 500 more is a reminder that most acts of international terrorism emanate from sources that can’t be blamed on Trump or isolated right-wingers.

Threat - Movement - Christians - Non-Muslims - Persecution

The most pressing threat comes from an international movement that singles out Christians and other non-Muslims for persecution and terror.

Sri Lanka has an extensive recent history of violence and terror but not one that involved conflict between Muslims and Christians or the Buddhist majority in that island nation. But Islamism is a movement that stretches across borders and has the ability to both inspire and aid local...